Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 2.djvu/26

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258
On Vestiges of Ortholithic Reinains in North Africa,

ruins of Hagar Kim, in Malta,[1] a huge stone 20 feet high, undressed, and to all appearance unhewn, towers above the other ponderous blocks with which it is in contact. On the portion which thus protrudes I noticed small niches, conveniently cut for the toes and hands; and, on climbing to the top by means of these, I found it hollowed out into a flat-bottomed basin, 3 feet 8 inches long by 1 foot broad and 10 inches deep.[2]

Resuming our cursory enumeration, we pass on to the province of Algiers, and find our next example on the coast between Cherchell (Julia Cæsarea) and Tfassed (Tipasa); at least, Dr. Shaw, one of the earliest and most observant of modern travellers in those regions, mentions in his itinerary "having fallen in at this point with a number of stone coffins of an oblong figure, not unlike those that are sometimes found in our own island."[3] Allowing for the antiquarian phraseology current a hundred and twenty years ago, and guided more by the comparison which is instituted, it seems most probable that those "coffins" were of the type which we have in view. But the province of Algiers offers other examples in the group of cromlechs at Bainam, already described, and also in a number of somewhat analogous tombs, at a place called Djelfa, lying towards the south, about eighty miles in the interior. The design of these last consists of an oblong inclosure, or rather grave, defined by four slabs, covered by one or, occasionally, two others, at a height of 8 or 12 inches above the soil. Their dimensions vary from 6 feet by 2 feet, to 1 foot 7 inches in length, by 9 inches in breadth; and it has been suggested that those of the smaller size were the graves of children. Each tomb is surrounded by a circle of rude stones about 9 inches high; and sometimes the circle is double. In the construction of these sepulchres, while some of the features are typical of primeval remains, others are of so general and indefinite a character as hardly to be limitable to any period or manner of inhumation. In some respects they might even be Arab; and their standing at no great distance from the ruins of a Roman station might, on the other hand, suggest that they owed their origin to its occupants. It is, however, to be remembered, that in a case of this kind, and especially in a country which has experienced so many vicissi-

  1. ↑ I have referred to these remains, and the sources of information regarding them in the Archæological Journal, vol. xiii. p. 397.
  2. ↑ It is also worth noting here, that M. Mérimée describes a cromlech in Corsica with a small trench or channel (rigole évidemment travaillée de main d'homme) in the upper stone.—Voyage en Corse, p. 27. Paris, 1840. The existence of these troughs tends to confirm the artificial character of some of the so-called Rock Basins observed in connection with ancient remains in Britain. See the careful discussion as to those on Dartmoor by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in the Journal of the British Archæological Association, vol. xvi.
  3. ↑ Shaw's Travels in Barbary, vol. i. p. 64.
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